Marc Clarà
Marc Clarà
The development of professional practice: emotion and semiotic mediation in the field of teaching
Marc Clarà is an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). His research focuses on the relationship between knowledge, practice and emotion, particularly in the field of teaching. He has investigated how knowledge mediates professional practice and emotion, and how this knowledge is constructed and developed through social interaction in teacher education and professional development processes. He is currently leading the CONAR project, which investigates the social dynamics involved in the development of teacher resilience.
The main subject of this keynote is how learning works to develop professional practice. To address this issue, I will present a conceptualization of practice that integrates emotion, and I will propose that practice develops through the transformation of a specific type of meaning: situational meaning. I will then propose an analytic apparatus to structurally study situational meaning and its role as a mediator of professional practice, and I will present some empirical results on the development of resilient practice in the field of teaching. Specifically, I will present our findings about the key structural aspects of meaning that impact teachers' emotional experience and about the semiotic mechanisms that enable the transformation of mediational meaning in order to develop resilient practice. Finally, I will outline an ongoing line of research on the role of social interaction in the development of professional practice.
Helen Jossberger
Helen Jossberger
Stimulate and Simulate: Making Learning Work
Inspired by the conference theme ‘Learning Works’, my keynote is titled ‘Stimulate and Simulate: Making Learning Work’. When reflecting on ‘Learning Works’, the underlying positive claim is striking. However, depending on the situations and circumstances the desired or intended learning outcomes are not always achieved. I am intrigued by the question how we can prepare individuals for complex professional practice and support learners to self-regulate, reflect, and continuously develop. In this talk, I would like to draw on research from different professional fields and explore how stimulating learning processes through authentic challenges and simulating real-world practice can catalyse meaningful learning. The starting point for most of my studies is expertise research. From this perspective, I will look more closely into what professionals do, how they practice, develop and refine complex skills across diverse learning contexts to shed light on how their learning and professional development can be supported.
In 2006, I gave my very first conference presentation at the SIG 14 conference in Heerlen, back then still as a Master student. Quickly, SIG 14 became my homebase. I have served as JURE coordinator for four years and have not missed a single conference. Thus, I suppose that I can call myself a long-standing SIG 14 member. Currently, I work in the Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Educational Science at the University of Regensburg, Germany. My work integrates cognitive psychology and educational science to better understand how (aspiring) professionals develop complex skills across learning and work contexts. More recently, I am a member of the EARLI E-CER ‘Scaffolding in Simulations for Learning and Professional Development’. Moreover, I serve as an Assistant Editor for Educational Research Review. I received my Ph.D. from the Open Universiteit, The Netherlands, where my doctoral research examined self-regulated learning in vocational education, and I hold a Master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology from Maastricht University, The Netherlands.